Exhibition: Shakespeare at the OU

The next clip (Clip 8) provides a glance at another single word of Shakespeare, in a different tragedy. The focus here is on part of Hamlet’s famous soliloquy, ‘To be or not to be’, and the term examined is ‘nobler.’ Its full import is perhaps easily overlooked.

This clip is taken from the very first Arts Foundation course of the Open University, and perhaps it shows its age. It is, after all, filmed in black-and-white, and the format is a formal lecture, albeit a brief one. But Arnold Kettle’s insight into the rich complexities of Shakespeare’s language is no less perceptive than that of Brown, or Glover, or almost anyone one might name.

View Clip 8